This blog is about The Big Picture - information and insights about what goes on in the world outside our borders - and what it means for Americans. Unless otherwise specified, all photos from Deena Stryker archive.

Saturday, June 16, 2012

Triple Election Weekend and Why We Should Care

France, Greece and Egypt vote in second round elections today and tomorrow and none of these polls should leave the rest of the world indifferent. A parliamentary majority in France for Socialist President Francois Hollande will enable him to enact social reforms desired by the French 99%. It will also strengthen his position vis a vis German Chancellor Angela Merkel in their dual over whether to give greater weight to austerity or growth within the Euro zone.

However, the extent to which Hollande will be able to implement his reforms will also depend on the outcome of the Greek parliamentary election, which will determine whether Greece negotiates less painful austerity measures that will enable it to remain in the Eurozone, accepts the draconian measures imposed upon it by the IMF and the European Central Bank in order to remain in the Eurozone, or decides to abandon the Euro and go it alone. The first two alternatives would be extremely painful for the Greek people, the third could render moot the dispute between Merkel and Hollande, as it might lead to the death of the common currency that was intended to further integrate a continent wracked by three wars in less than a century.

This context is fraught with a dual irony, unspoken but lost on no one. Germany was the aggressor in those three European wars, the last of which was launched partly with the stated goal of fulfilling Napoleon’s dream of a European Empire. Though defeated in the latter two conflicts, Germany rose to become the most dynamic European country, now expected to bail out those hardest hit by the global financial crisis. This state of affairs prompts two further considerations: the first is Europe’s failure, in the decades leading up to the introduction of the Euro, to fully unite under a federal system, and the second is the fact that conditions for World War Two were created when after the First World War Germany was saddled with enormous reparations that led to hyperinflation and paved the way for the rise of Hitler. That hyperinflation of eighty years ago is constantly evoked as the reason for Germany’s insistence on austerity, obfuscating the possibility that the collapse of the Euro, in the most bitter of ironies, could once again turn the countries of an insufficiently united Europe against each other.

Then there is the fact that the Euro is the world’s second reserve currency. The end of the Eurozone would have cascading repercussions on international finance, hastening the day when the BRIC countries, led by Russia and China, will cease to use the dollar in international transactions.

Moving on now to Egypt, notwithstanding its first truly ‘democratic’ elections, a powerful military has worked to overcome last year’s popular revolution in favor of a new strongman. Three days before the presidential runoff, the Supreme Court ruled that Mubarak’s last Prime Minister could stay in the race, flouting the rule that barred members of the old regime from running. Adding insult to injury, it dissolved the recently elected parliament under another rule which it let stand. Should efforts to defeat the Muslim Brotherhood’s candidate fail, he would be deprived of the parliamentary majority won just a few months ago. Whoever the new Egyptian president is, he will rule without stated duties, without a constitution and at first, without a parliament.

The failure of the Egyptian Revolution will have two external consequences. It will signal to the remaining Middle East dictatorships that the Arab Spring can be halted, and it will remove a potential threat to Israel constituted by the widely shared anti-Israeli sentiments of its people that former Presidents have kept in check. Today a high-ranking Israeli official speaking on RT admitted that Egypt, on Israel’s southern border, constitutes a far graver threat than relatively far away Iran. In recent months, other high-ranking Israeli figures have warned against attacking Iran, even as the government increased its threat to do so because of that country’s support for Syria, its northern neighbor that is facing armed opposition. The end of the Egyptian revolution, combined with a deterioration in the Syrian situation, will allow Israel to once again focus on it project to bomb Iran’s nuclear facilities.

It is difficult to believe that the United States and Israel have been standing on the sidelines since the start of the Arab Spring in late 2010. If Wikileaks manages to continue its work notwithstanding the probable extradition to the United States of Julian Assange to face charges of terrorism, the international community will eventually learn of their respective roles, but given the increasing speed with which events unfold, it will not have the leisure to wait for the historical narrative to be revealed.

The Security Council could soon be confronted with a situation that is eerily reminiscent of the Cuban Missile Crisis, as relations between Washington and Moscow veer toward a new standoff. In response to a strident accusation by Hillary Clinton that it was supplying arms to Syria, Russia this week stated that helicopters destined for Syria are refurbished machines repaired under a previous contract. Today it denied reports that a ship is carrying weapons and troops toit naval facility in the Syrian port of Tartus. The Cuban Missile Crisis was sparked when U.S. reconnaissance planes photographed the construction of underground missile sites being built by the Soviet Union along Cuba’s coast in retaliation for the stationing of American missiles in Turkey and Italy. The thirteen day standoff between Nikita Khruschev and John F. Kennedy ended with the Soviets repatriating their missiles and the U.S. agreeing not to invade Cuba. However, the current situation is very different: the U.S. has openly touted completion of contingency plans to invade Syria, and there is no quid pro quo that the Russians could offer in return for American backtracking. The two sides can only move forward toward confrontation.

These are just the most obvious stakes in this week-end’s elections, far from American shores, but crucial to a world in which it can still do much harm.

Welcome to Otherjones!

As announced a month ago, henceforth I will post all my blogs here, abandoning websites that support their editors, but not their writers. I'm looking for thirty readers willing to contribute $10 a month each. They will receive an article every day in their inbox.

The alternative press is replete with despair and ‘hope’, neither of which is helpful. ‘Squawking’, as Chris Hedges puts it, may alleviate some of the pain Americans experience at being identified with a government that brutalizes Others at will, but it doesn’t change the ‘facts on the ground’. As for hope, it is an easy cop-out: in the present state of the world, we can never be certain that tomorrow will come. Whether a barefoot child in Africa or a hedge-fund manager, all of us are the potential victims of hubris.

My goal is to prepare my readers in ways more important than stockpiling food and bandages for whatever happens, as we transition from an American century to a world century, helping them see through the web of lies with which we are being controlled.
Having lived for years at a time in half a dozen ‘foreign’, countries — learning their languages and histories — I have a unique ability to identify events that bear watching. That life, however, could not provide ‘retirement benefits’, so if you appreciate the unique combination of information and insight that characterizes my work, I hope you will integrate a small donation to Otherjones into your budget.

By clicking on the Donate button, you will be able to contribute via Paypal or your credti card. Thanks!
P.S. I encourage you to review the archive, by clicking first on the year triangle, then on that of each month. You will find many posts from recent years still relevant today.

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If You Had Been Watching....

One of the worst aspects of the US media landscape is its neglect of what goes on in the rest of the world. When I returned from nineteen years of living in France, where I sometimes watched CNN’s excellent coverage of world events, I was surprised that in the US, CNN did nothing comparable. I called the main editorial office in New York and was told ’Americans aren’t interested in foreign affairs’, revealing one one the reasons
why the US government gets away with wreaking havoc around the world: Americans have no information that would prompt them to protest their county’s actions abroad.

The fact is that several countries’ governments — aside from the British — fund international television channels. These include France 24, NHK (Japan) , Al-Jazeera (Qatar) RT (Russia) and Telesur (Latin America). These channels usually broadcast in English, Spanish and Arabic, using native speakers, enabling most people in most parts of the world to hear news that their national outlets do not cover, getting a unique window onto the world.

Meanwhile, Americans are told that the channel that is most significant for them, RT, is propaganda!

RT is significant not only because, like the other foreign channels it offers a wide range of programs but because it includes opinions from many well-known Americans who never appear on our own msm.

I intend to try, insofar as my time permits, to signal news stories covered by these foreign channels that are absent from our own, many of which are significant.